Exclusive: Interview with Alawar about working with Com2uS

The company Alawar recently published the game Heroes War in Russian (in domestic markets – “Gangs: Kings of the streets”) from Com2uS. In connection with the recent release, we interviewed the Novosibirsk team and asked about cooperation with the Koreans.

The questions were answered by Yulia Nabieva, Head of Mobile Sales and Marketing at Alawar.

Julia Nabieva

Hi! We haven’t talked to Alawar for a long time, so, first of all, please tell us about what policy the company currently adheres to in the market? How do you generally see yourself in the mobile games market today?

Hi! Our policy now, as before, is to make high–quality and interesting games for our users. Recently, the preferences of the players have changed, so our games are changing: we are switching to a free-to-play model. This process has been actively going on for more than a year: we have several ready-made projects, a whole portfolio of games in development, partners with whom we are working on releasing their f2p games on the local Russian market. In general, we are working on all fronts.

And how does cooperation with Korean companies fit into this policy?

It’s no secret that game development is developed in Asia, there are a lot of advanced mobile developers and publishers, in many ways they are the legislators of the industry. There is also interest in games from Asia in the market as a whole.

During this year, we have been actively looking at the Asian market, studying successful products that may be in demand in Russia. We reviewed a lot of top-grossing games, met with companies and selected several games for release in Russia.

For our partners, a release in this market with our help is also an effective model of cooperation. The Russian market is very attractive for all major players of the mobile market. Our market is growing both in terms of users and revenue. But it is difficult for them to enter Russia themselves, first of all, because of the closeness of the market, a large number of local specifics when working with traffic and the community, and most importantly, a lack of expertise in how the market works and what its users need.

Why did you choose Com2uS?

First of all, we looked at the games and their success. Com2uS company is successful in the mobile market and shows stable results, releasing hits. After the first personal meeting with a partner at Casual Connect Singapore in May of this year, it became clear that this company is also a reliable partner with extensive experience. They are great: they set an excellent pace of work, and it is always a pleasure to communicate with the team. In fact, in just 2 months we carried out the adaptation and localization of the game and came to the release!

How did the purchase of Com2uS by Gamevil affect your cooperation?

We see this situation as a merger of companies in order to increase the total market share and, of course, marketing capacity. This is a positive change for us, and we will also get new opportunities to develop cooperation. 

Are you going to produce Korean products on the domestic market in the future?

Of course, and we see not only Koreans as our partners, but also representatives of other Asian countries. We plan not only to produce their products here, but also to continue to enter the Asian markets with our games. We have already announced our partnership with NHN and the release of our game in their messenger LINE, we are also working with Korean partners on the distribution of our games in Korea and are launching cooperation with partners in China. We are constantly working on building an effective distribution platform, and we are already getting a good return.

“Gangs” is a non-standard project for Alawar, a midcore butler with a role-playing system, PvP, a full-fledged single. Why was he chosen for localization, and not some casual farm, which Com2uS has in abundance?

Our players are changing, as well as products, and the midcore trend dictates new rules. But we continue to release our casual titles (Montezuma Treasures 4 is already being developed for mobile platforms, and this is our classic premium-Match3). We support our loyal casual users and platforms where such content will always be in demand, for example, Amazon Store. 

What does localization and operation of such a project require from the publisher?

In the case of “Gangs”, we not only engaged in localization, but also adapted the project to the domestic audience. From our side, expertise was needed: how much the gameplay, plot, interface is understandable and familiar to Russia, and we also had to adapt the storyline, characters and balance. We have worked a lot on building a player retention system, in-game events and their synchronization with activities in SMM, which we are actively engaged in.

After the release, work on the product is only intensifying, in addition to working with the Com2iS team to improve the performance of the game, we also work with the game community, manage all events within the game and develop the product.

What problems did you encounter when launching the project, how were they solved?

There were no problems in preparing for the release, since we work with real professionals who are perfectly able to plan work and foresee all risks. An interesting case for us was working with statistics: we use custom solutions for analytics, and statistics from a partner were already connected to the project. We have done a lot of work to collect statistics from the partner and transfer them to our accounting systems for subsequent analysis.

What indicators do you expect from him?

We have ambitious plans: we expect a significant increase in the audience and, accordingly, good financial performance of the project. Now we are actively working on the success of the game, and the results will soon be visible to other market participants.

And the last question: a year ago Sergey Orlovsky became one of the members of the board of directors of Alawar. Question: How closely do Alawar and Nival work with each other today?

Both companies have informally always been friends and partners. We help each other in solving difficult tasks, meet regularly, communicate and discuss how we are doing and how projects are going, exchange experience in marketing. Sergey is an excellent professional, and Alexander Lyskovsky invited him to join the board of directors, as we really appreciate his experience in working with f2p content and the audience with which we are actively working now.

Thanks for the interview!

Yes, today the game has received a feature in the Russian Google Play.